Don't Look in the Basement (1973)

... aka: Beyond Help
... aka: Death Ward No. 13
... aka: Forgotten, The
... aka: No miréis en el sótano
... aka: Non guardare in cantina
... aka: Snake Pit, The

Directed by:
S.F. Brownrigg

Sherald 'S.F.' Brownrigg began as a combat photographer and director of army training films while still in the military. After finishing up his stint in the army, he then moved on to doing sound and sound mixing for such low-budget filmmakers as Irvin Berwick and Larry Buchanan, plus edited Buchanan's INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN (1957) remake THE EYE CREATURES (1965). At some point in his film journeys, Brownrigg decided he wanted to start making his own movies. (Perhaps he actually watched the Berwick and Buchanan movies he'd worked on and figured there was no way he could do any worse!) Originally titled The Forgotten, Brownrigg's debut film was shot for less than 100,000 dollars over a 12 day period primarily in a plain white, sparsely furnished dorm house at Westminster College (now Trinity Institute) in Tehuacana, Texas. It was first released in a limited run by Cine Globe under its original title and put on a double bill with the cannibalism horror-comedy THE FOLKS AT RED WOLF INN (1972), but failed to gain much interest or attention that way. That all changed once the film was passed off to Hallmark Releasing.

Hallmark first issued the film under the new title of The Snake Pit on a double-bill with Mario Bava's proto slasher TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE (1971). They then tried it out under the titles Beyond Help and Death Ward No. 13 with the recycled “To avoid fainting, keep repeating, it's only a movie...” tag line from another of Hallmark's releases: Wes Craven's notorious The Last House on the Left (1972). Not only did they do that, but they also claimed Don't Look in the Basement (the fifth and final title given to this and the one that finally ended up sticking) was from the maker's of Last House and frequently paired the two films up together. The rest is history. Don't went on to become one of the biggest moneymakers on the mid 70s drive-in circuit, playing alongside a wide array of other genre films, including the sleazy Italian import SLAUGHTER HOTEL (1971), Paul Bartel's wonderfully bizarre PRIVATE PARTS (1972) and Joe Sarno's lesbian vampire skin flick Plaything of the Devil (1973). The film continued being a workhorse into the VHS and DVD eras, especially after falling into the public domain. Other genre films copying the popular “Don't” title later emerged throughout the 70s and 80s.

At the three-story Stephens Sanitarium, a remote insane asylum, a doctor (Michael Harvey) unwisely turns his back to his axe-wielding patient and ends up getting chopped to death. And then a nurse (Jessie Lee Fulton) who's threatening to leave is suffocated in her room. Now only one staff member – Dr. Geraldine Masters (“Anne MacAdams” / Annabelle Weenick) – remains behind to take care of the “family.” Thankfully, beautiful young nurse Charlotte Beale (Rosie Holotik, who'd previously appeared in and graced the cover of the April 1972 issue of Playboy Magazine) is on her way there to take up a position offered to her by the late Dr. Stephens. Charlotte has experience in psychiatric therapy and quit her big city hospital job to take this one, but she's hit with the bad news of the doctor's unfortunate death as soon as she arrives. Dr. Masters informs her that since she's now in charge of things, she plans on altering the doctor's original therapy techniques; techniques that involved pushing the patients' obsessions to the breaking point until they're forced to snap back into reality. That clearly hasn't been working out and, in fact, may have only worsened things. Reluctantly, Geraldine decides to keep her late colleague's promise of hiring Charlotte and she moves in the same evening. Now it's time to meet the patients...

There's Sam (Bill McGhee), a gentle, child-like black man with the mentality of an 8 year old (caused by a botched lobotomy performed by Dr. Stephens years earlier) who loves playing with toys and sucking on Popsicles and was the previous murdered nurse's favorite patient. But Sam's harmless, amiable personality turns out to be an anomaly at the sanitarium. Vietnam vet Sarge (Hugh Feagin) went crazy after accidentally causing the deaths of some of his comrades, still believes he's in the midst of a war and is paranoid that they're coming to get it. The senile, elderly Mrs. Callingham (Rhea MacAdams) suffers from hallucinations, likes to recite cryptic poems and believes that flowers are her children. Sweaty, delusional Judge Oliver W. Cameron (Gene Ross) runs around speaking gibberish legal lingo. Danny Bonaduce look-a-like Danny (Jessie Kirby) is a kleptomaniac who likes to taunt, annoy and pester pretty much everyone. Jennifer Downy (Harryette Warren) is severely withdrawn to the point of catatonia, but does manage to get an extra boost of energy whenever she's given the opportunity to spring out of closets brandishing cutlery.

There's also Harriet (Camilla Carr), a super-protective mother who goes into a rage any time anyone threatens to separate her from her baby (doll) and, rounding out the group of mixed nuts, is Allyson King (Betty Chandler), who has severe daddy issues because her pa died, her stepfather divorced her mom and then she went through a series of bad relationships culminating in marrying a guy who pimped her out and then left her for another woman. Now she's a love-starved nymphomaniac whose hobbies include whipping out her breasts whenever she's in the company of men and raping telephone repair guys in utility closets. Despite the erratic, unpredictable and often violent behavior of the patients, everyone is encouraged to live as a trusting family unit. That means, shared chores, living space and bathrooms between patients and staff, no locks on the doors and full access to pretty much everything there. This, of course, turns out not to be such a great idea.

A series of weird events transpire that soon have Charlotte wishing she'd kept her other job. She almost gets stabbed, the phone lines are cut and the talkative Mrs. Callingham is found with her tongue cut out; something Dr. Masters believes she did to herself. After we become well acquainted with all of the patients, one of them starts killing off the others and hiding their bodies. It takes over an hour for that to happen and none of it – not an eyeball skewered on one of those desktop paper spear things nor a glimpse of necro bedroom activity nor even a moment when one of the patients finally loses it and starts laying into the others with an axe – is all that shocking or shown in what one would consider gory detail. However, throwing all of these crazy and bizarre characters into a murder mystery format does lend a certain unpredictability to the proceedings. Pretty much anyone could be a killer. The amount of talk and the slow pace do eventually take their toll on the film, forcing the director to rush through and sort of fumble the finale, but the movie has another unexpected strength to help carry it through...

One of Brownrigg's strong points, one that most of his fellow regional filmmakers did not possess, was always employing talented local actors and getting good performances out of them. Regardless of how cheap his movie looks, how the location never changes and how there's little in the way of action or excitement, the actors themselves are good enough to keep the proceedings reasonably entertaining. There's not a single cast member here who's not at least somewhat effective in their part. The clear standouts here are the likable McGhee, Ross, who is brilliant at conveying madness using only his eyes (something the director also realizes considering the amount of eyeball close-ups he gives the actor) and, most especially, Weenick, who has the film's most challenging role and does an exceptional job playing it. Weenick; like the director, a veteran of Buchanan's awful movies, was also the production manager. Brownrigg wisely kept most of these people around for his subsequent forays into the genre: Don't Open the Door! (1974), Scum of the Earth aka Poor White Trash Part II (1974) and Keep My Grave Open (1976).

In 2008, a remake was announced and a poster and press materials followed, but the film was never actually made. In 2014, the late Brownrigg's son, Tony Brownrigg, decided to finally make the sequel that his father always wanted to make but never got around to. Titled Id: Don't Look in the Basement 2, the film is finished but still awaiting distribution.

★★1/2

Hakujitsumu (1981)

... aka: Day Dream
... aka: Daydream

Directed by:
Tetsuji Takechi

This is a full color remake of a mostly black-and-white film from the same director that caused quite a stir in Japan back in 1964. That film, also titled Hakujitsumu / DAY-DREAM, was not only the first big budget effort in the 'pinku eiga' sexploitation subgenre but also one of the very first Japanese films to dare to (very briefly and only partially) show a glimpse of pubic hair; a big no-no in Japan. That resulted in the film being one of the first of its type to be optically blurred by censors. Day-Dream '64 would also lay the groundwork for later socially and politically critical films from the controversial Takechi; at least one of which landed him in court on obscenity charges. After taking a breather in the 70s to do some writing and host a talk show, Takechi (nearing his 70th birthday by this point) returned in the early 80s with this new film. It, like his previous efforts, was made specifically to stir up controversy and poke at the artistically-repressive hornet's nest that was the government. However, by this point in the game, there was really only one way to do that. Forget glimpses of pubic hair, this one was going to have full-blown hardcore sex. Of course, the sex scenes would still have to be fogged out for legal distribution in Japan, but Takechi had successfully made history yet again by making Japan's first theatrically-released film to feature hardcore sex... even if the audiences there didn't exactly get to see it.

Director Tetsuji Takechi

Drafted for the lead role was a then-unknown Kyôko Aizome. While still in her teens, Aizome began her career as a nude magazine model before working her way up to co-starring in numerous softcore pinku and Roman porno films like Molester's Subway (1976), Pink Salon: Five Lewd Women (1978) and (the most widely seen to audiences outside of Japan) Yasuharu Hasebe's Raping! (1978). Her starring turn in Daydream '81, as well as her enthusiasm for engaging in the required non-simulated sex, would not only make her famous in her home country but it also made her Japan's first hardcore porn star. She capitalized on her infamy by becoming a highly-paid stripper (something that landed her in prison facing indecency charges) and a major figure in both soft and hardcore AV (adult video) product in her country over the next several decades. Many of the titles used her name as a selling point and she eventually ended up directing some of these films herself. For one of her films, she had her hymen surgically repaired so she could lose her virginity a second time before the cameras. In 1986, she co-starred with none-other-than Traci Lords in Traci Takes Tokyo, which featured a lesbian scene between the American and Japanese porn queens that was later recycled into other films. All are now, of course, illegal to own here because of Lords' underage status at the time of filming. Decades later and well into her 50s, Aizome was still appearing in adult films after having “retired” several times prior.

The most familiar face to genre fans however will be that of male lead Kei Satô, who had appeared in three major Japanese horror classics of the 1960s: Kwaidan (1964), Onibaba (1964) and Kuroneko (1968) and was a regular presence in the films of acclaimed Japanese New Wave director Nagisa Ôshima. Surprisingly, Satô (53 years old at the time of filming) is not only involved in the film itself but also is the only male even involved in the hardcore action, In fact, there's only one male-female sex scene in this - spread over a whopping 20 minutes time in bits and pieces - and he's the male half of it. This would not only make him the first male actor to appear in a hardcore scene in a major Japanese release, but perhaps also the first male actor with an award-winning mainstream career still very much in full swing to ever go the hardcore route. The notoriety of having a big star in a scene of this nature was one of the reasons the film became a bit hit in Japan.

Things open exactly like they do in the original version, right down to using many of the same shots. At a dentist's office, Mr. Kurahashi (Takemi Katsushika) is in the waiting room anxiously awaiting a tooth extraction when the lovely, meek-looking and kimono-clad Chieko Hamuro (Aizome) comes in. The two are both brought back to see the dentist (Satô) at the same time, where Chieko gets lots of phallic instruments poked around in her mouth, has water squirted all over her face and paste rubbed all over her teeth, gums, lips and face in exaggerated and overly-long shots. Both patients are put under with laughing gas and then things start getting weird. The dentist and his two female assistants (Saeda Kawaguchi and Yuri Yaio) decide to “loosen” Chieko's constrictive clothing by basically ripping open her top. The two assistants then sport vampire fangs and the dentist begins sucking on everyone's nipples. As all that's going on, Kurahashi looks on in his drug-induced state as the film then cuts away from his hallucination to another longer one.

We're swept off to a neon nightclub where we again meet up with Chieko and Kurahashi. He wants to get her away from her older, controlling, abusive lover (also Satô), who he brands “the devil.” Under his spell, a powerless Chieko declines his offer and accompanies her lover home. Kurahashi follows. Chieko's lover proves to be both gentle and sadistic. One moment he's softly caressing her, rubbing her and even sucking her toes (bleh) and the next he's tying her up and terrorizing her. In between passionate XXX sex, the lover strings her upside down, kicks her, slaps her, whips her and even threatens to cut her up with a scalpel. All the while, an anguished Kurahashi watches from right outside the window. He screams, bangs on the glass (which doesn't shatter) and cries, but his noise falls on deaf ears. Afterward, while her lover is sleeping, Chieko swipes his keys, flees the apartment house naked and steals his car. She ends up running the dentist over and decapitating him in the process, then drives off again. But try as she might, Chieko has a harder time ditching her lover than she probably expected. She keeps seeing him again and again, now as a vampire count, while Kurahashi continues his pursuit of the young woman in an unsuccessful attempt to “help” her.

Because the bulk of this movie is a dream, the director pretty much just does whatever he wants at whatever pace he wants and, as a result, the film has the same exact tedious pacing problems as the original version. Certain scenes and individual shots - three minutes of dancing, several minutes sitting inside a car as it goes through a car wash, wandering through a department store, that damn “escalator scene” once again - go on for far longer than they really need to. The fact this runs half an hour longer than the first to accommodate the sex only exacerbates this issue. On the plus side, this is actually an improvement over the first due to higher production values, a more vivid presentation (the story itself seems much more suited to color) and the addition of some interesting new sequences (including ones set at the car wash and an amusement park horror ride). The best thing about this one though is the cinematography (six photographers are credited, including Akira Takada) and colorful lighting schemes, which are striking and often downright brilliant. This movie may not make much sense, but it at least looks really good doing it.

Immediately after Takechi's first version of Daydream, Hyun Mok Yoo decided to remake the film in South Korea under the title Chunmong (1965; aka Empty Dream), which proved to be nearly as controversial as the original and also got its director into hot water. None of these earlier versions -nor the 1981 one - have been officially distributed in the U.S. on home video. However, a fourth version, a “sequel” this time and also directed by Takechi and starring Aizome is much easier to find under the title Captured for Sex (1987). Decades later in 2009, Aizome decided to co-direct (with Shinji Imaoka) a fifth version, also titled Hakujitsumu. All of these are based on a short story by Jun'ichirô Tanizaki.

The version I watched was the same one released in Japan which fogs or blurs out the frontal nudity and also puts bizarre images (including people wearing kabuki masks) over the hardcore footage to block it out. The original, uncut version featuring the unobstructed hardcore footage was passed around illegally in Japan for years but eventually made its way to the Netherlands for a home video release. Most of the uncut versions floating around are sourced from the latter, which is in Japanese with burnt-in Dutch subtitles.

★★1/2